On Wednesday Night, July 24th, we will discuss a controversial resolution that was approved by the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in June 2019 in Birmingham, AL. Resolution #9 stated that Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality could be employed by Southern Baptists as “analytical tools” to help us with racial reconciliation but should be kept subordinate to Scripture.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) was developed at several large liberal law schools in the USA during the 1980s. The theory basically says that while overt racism was made illegal in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, subtle racism is still found throughout American society. Racism is not just a personal thing where someone may despise and/or mistreat another person simply because of race.  CRT says that whether we realize it or not, racism is built into our laws, institutions, and culture that keep white people in power and “people of color” in subjection. CRT basically says American society is rigged toward white supremacy and white privilege.

“Intersectionality” takes it another step and says within various races there are other examples of oppression where gender, religion, education, etc intersects with race.  For example, a middle eastern Muslim woman may be more oppressed in America than a black man. The goal of CRT is to identify and fix these inequalities in our society.

Since this Critical Race Theory has it’s origins in Marxism, the Southern Baptist Convention was careful to say that a Christian’s attitude toward race should be shaped by the New Testament.  The SBC approved the resolution saying that CRT could be used as an analytical tool to “analyze” whether or not our churches and institutions are racist, but that we would look to the Bible for solutions.

Many Southern Baptists are critical of this resolution because it basically gives our seminaries the approval to study Critical Race Theory as a tool, but over time, they fear it may morph into teaching Marxism in our Baptist schools.  What do you think?

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